Death toll in China's Tianjin blasts rises to 159

BEIJING: With the death of eight more people, the toll in China's worst industrial disaster today rose sharply to 158, nearly three weeks after a series of huge blasts struck a toxic chemicals warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin.

The death toll from the Tianjin warehouse explosions rose to 158 on Monday with 15 people still missing, local officials said.

The dead include 94 firefighters, 11 policemen and 53 civilians. The missing include 10 firefighters and five civilians, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Two blasts ripped through a warehouse in Tianjin Port where large amounts of toxic chemicals were stored, including around 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide on August 12.

Authorities have detained a dozen people for the explosions and 11 officials and port executives were accused of dereliction of duty or abuse of power.

Meanwhile, more than 300 primary and middle schools in the Binhai New Area, where the port is located, opened for the new semester today as scheduled, local authorities said.

On Sunday, no excessive levels of pollutants were found in the air outside the exclusion zone, but high levels of cyanide were detected from water samples from inside the exclusion zone, with the worst about 20 times the level officially regarded as safe.